The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c11.13

c11.13

To return, however, to the drinking-scenes, which enjoyed a wide popularity under the Parthians and exerted an enduring influence on the subsequent Buddhist art of Gandhāra. To the examples of these scenes already given I feel constrained to add three more which seem to me particularly instructive. Two of them (figs. 49 and 50) come from Haḍḍa in Southern Afghānistān. Unlike any of the reliefs from Taxila or the Peshāwar Valley, they are made of a white calcareous limestone, which is somewhat softer and coarser than the chloritic and micaceous schist or than the steatite and does not permit of the same degree of delicacy in the carving.